But the picture of the teen-age kid holding his skateboard as he came out of Arizona’s first medical marijuana dispensary…

Oh, come on.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery didn’t see the photo in Friday’s newspaper, but he says it’s an accurate reflection of Arizona’s medical marijuana program.

“There’s not a single state with a medical marijuana act or anything similar that hasn’t turned into a recreational use program,” he said.

Potheads have been rejoicing for a week now, ever since Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon ruled that Arizona is good to go. The fact that marijuana is illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act shouldn’t stop the state from doling out doobie, Gordon ruled last Tuesday.

By Thursday, the state’s first marijuana dispensary opened in Glendale, with another to come in Tucson later this month and 124 more to follow soon in a neighborhood near you.

“Patients,” the dispensary’s attorney Ryan Hurley proclaimed, “are finally going to have the access voters intended them to have to medicine that makes them feel better.”

Listening to Hurley you would think all the state’s glaucoma-striken grannies were lining up at the pot clinic last week. That’s not what I saw and it’s not what the numbers reflect.

Not even close.

Medical marijuana eked its way into Arizona in 2010, as 50.17 percent of voters were sold on the law as a way to ease the symptoms of glaucoma or provide relief to a loved one battling cancer.

The law allows anyone with a doctor’s recommendation to obtain a state-issued card, entitling them to 2½ ounces of pot every two weeks. If they don’t want to grow their own, they can obtain it from a licensed “caregiver” – basically anybody who isn’t a certain sort of felon – or, eventually, head down to their neighborhood non-profit pot dispensary.

Nearly 34,000 Arizonans now hold cards giving them permission to smoke or grow weed, according to the state Department of Health Services.

Of them: a whopping 3.76 percent use marijuana to ease the symptoms of cancer. Another 1.53 percent suffer from glaucoma while 1.06 percent have AIDS.

Nearly 73 percent of “patients” are men and the people most likely to seek relief from their pain are 18 to 30 years old. More than 26 percent of card holders are 18-30, while 13 percent are over 60.

Meanwhile, just 10 doctors certified 46 percent of all medical marijuana patients during the first 15 months of the program, according to a DHS annual report. One busy naturopath recommended 2,557 people – about 12 percent of all medical marijuana patients.

I’m guessing that doctor might have gotten his own card: hand cramp, you know, from writing all those recommendations.

Now before you bash me, I’m all for someone suffering from a legitimate illness getting access to pot if a physician feels it’ll ease his or her pain. But as for those recreational users getting dope under the guise of “medicine,” let’s at least not delude ourselves about what’s going on here by calling them patients.

The more honest approach would be to go the way of Colorado and Washington where voters legalized marijuana last month. Then, at least, we could tax the heck of it, as we do with cigarettes, and put the cartels out of the pot smuggling business.

But if this whole medical marijuana movement is truly about helping those in terrible pain, there is a way to do it: get the U.S. attorney general to reschedule marijuana as a schedule 2 drug under the Controlled Substances Act, allowing it to be prescribed just like morphine or oxycodone.

“If you go that route, I as a law enforcement official have no problem with it whatsoever …,” said Montgomery, who is appealing Judge Gordon’s ruling. “This wink and a nod, it doesn’t serve anybody who may be able to legitimately benefit, nor does it really serve us as a society where we’re playing games with the law.”

Until that happens, though, I’m hoping to become Patient No. 2,558 of a certain naturopath. I, too, have severe and chronic pain, you see, or I will soon enough.

I’ve been inundated this week with calls, e-mails and Facebook and blog posts, all from Phoenix citizens who don’t seem to appreciate the keen strategy employed when the Phoenix City Council doled out a 33 percent pay raise to City Manager David Cavazos.

I’ve heard from city employees and retirees who haven’t seen a cost of living increase in their pensions in years. From citizens who live on a pittance and those whose idea of a banner year is hanging on to a job.

From people who have this idea that city government is supposed to be working for them, not the other way around.
People who say a $78,000 raise – plus the resulting additional $8,580 in deferred pay – is, just possibly, a tad excessive.
Actually, excessive isn’t the word they used. More like obscene, arrogant, insensitive, tasteless, a travesty and the real crowd favorite: a slap in the face.

“I wonder if David Cavazos clips coupons each time he shops at Fry’s for weekly specials or digs deep into his wallet for lunch money?” Martha Flannery wrote. “Coupons and ‘digging deep’ have become a way of life for almost everyone I know.”

Certainly for Daniel “Duck” Chauvin. “It makes me physically ill to know that this man will now be making about $30,0000 a month. Being on a small Social Security stipend, this amount is $20,000 more than I receive in an entire year,” he wrote.

City leaders point out that they’re on a mission to ensure that Phoenix employees are paid a competitive rate. Naturally, they started with the top guy.

Who, having been forced to live for several years on $236,998, was practically a pauper when compared to his counterparts in other cities with a council-city manager system of government.

Cavazos’ new base pay puts him at $315,000 a year – not counting his $7,200 car allowance, his $4,000 “longevity” bonus and his $34,650 in annual deferred pay and, of course, the resulting rocket effect on his eventual lifetime pension.

Meanwhile, the median household income in the city he manages is $43,960, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That doesn’t sit well with Myrna Scherer.

“He’s already making at least four times what a lot of our citizens make, plus the ‘perks’,” she wrote. “I’m sorry but Sal DiCiccio and the rest of the City Council, you are WAY out of line here. And, Mr. Cavazos, if you were the least bit considerate of Phoenix citizens, you’d refuse this raise and continue to ‘do the job you were hired to do.’ ”

That really is the most astonishing part of this astonishing story. City leaders justify the massive increase by pointing out that Cavazos did his job well, getting the city out the red and saving $59 million.

I’m guessing you do yours well, too, but there’s no 33 percent raise headed your way. In fact, wages and salaries grew an average of 1.7 percent over the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the same period, consumer prices rose 2.2 percent.

Add in a 2 percent food tax – imposed by the City Council in 2010 to shore up the budget – and it’s just beyond belief that city leaders could be so out of touch.

Alas, Mayor Greg Stanton says it’s the only way to attract and retain top talent.

Citizens aren’t buying it, mayor.

“The claim that the raise is necessary in order to retain this man’s talents is bunk,” wrote Eileen Lange. “Is he really going to resign if he doesn’t receive a huge raise? How many other equivalent positions are available in the USA that would come even close in pay or benefits?”

Well, there’s the president of the United States, who makes $85,000 more than Cavazos. Of course, he gets that cool airplane.

Please don’t tell me that Phoenix is thinking of buying Cavazos an airplane.

Instead, I’d like to hear that city leaders are actually listening to the people who elected them.

Reconsider this raise, Mayor Stanton. If Cavazos is angling for more money, offer him the same percentage raise that rank-and-file employees are getting – or even better, the same percentage that Phoenix residents are getting.

If he decides to leave, well then order a cake, pass around a card and send him on his way with our best wishes.

Elizabeth Johnson was sentenced to prison on Friday afternoon but there was no real resolution of the case. No solace for the family that every day wakes up and wonders if this will be the day they find out what happened to Baby Gabriel.

Is he dead as Johnson claimed in her brutal messages three years ago to the boy’s father, Logan McQueary?Or is he out there, somewhere with some couple that Johnson claims she gave the baby to?

A tearful Johnson on Friday told the judge she just wanted the baby to have a better life than she could give him. “I didn’t want Gabriel to have the hard life I had growing up. I imagined much better for him… I imagined Gabriel in a real family, something I didn’t think I could give him. That’s why I gave Gabriel away.”

To strangers. In a park.

It’s hard to separate what is right from what is legal.What is right would be for Johnson to stay in jail until she comes clean about the location of that child, or that child's body.Unfortunately, what is legal is something altogether different.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Kreamer sentenced Johnson to 5.25 years in prison, to be followed by four years of probation.She’s already served nearly three, so she’ll be out in just over two years.

And the McQueary family? They’ll still be living in a prison of sorts, wondering every day where Gabriel is.

The judge’s sentence was right. Though she’s one of the most unlikeable mothers around – and that is saying something – Johnson is going to get out and it’s best if she gets the help she needs to live a productive life.

But I can’t help wondering, as Sandy Peters, the child’s great aunt, asked.

One would think that Penn State has had enough trouble. Now, the school's Chi Omegas don sombreros and mustaches and pose for a picture in front of signs that say "Will work for weed + beer" and "I don't cut grass. I smoke it."

I'm sure their parents are so proud.

I was a Chi Omega (though thankfully not a Penn State). Big props to the national office for putting the little darlings on probation today. "Chi Omega does not condone behavior that violates our organization's polity on human dignity," Chi Omega National President Letitia Fulkerson said in a statement.

From one sorority sister to another, may I suggest, Ms. Fulkerson, that you ship them out to Arizona next summer for a little extra curricular activity?

I'm sure I can arrange for them to work on a landscaping crew in 110-degree heat. Perhaps they'll discover something about the people they mock and about what dignity really looks like because they clearly haven't learned it in State College.

A great weight has been lifted in the city of Phoenix, a fundamental wrong righted.

Happy days are clearly here again because members of the Phoenix City Council, compassionate types that they are, have pulled one of their own from the ranks of poverty and oppression. They’ve taken it upon themselves to ease his suffering, to improve his lot in life, to raise him up from a dreary life of bare subsistence.

As a result of their good works (and your money), City Manager David Cavazos’ tin cup now runneth over. And over and over.

And yeah, over.

I still have a hard time making my fingers type this, but the City Council last month voted to give Cavazos a 33 percent pay raise. That is, another $78,000 a year in base pay.

It doesn’t seem to matter that the city is too broke to hire replacements for police officers who leave.

It doesn’t seem to matter that rank-and-file employees haven’t seen had their pay and benefits fully restored after taking a cut a couple of years ago.

It doesn’t seem to matter that struggling families all over Phoenix are still paying 2 percent extra on their groceries, to keep this city afloat.

The new mantra at city hall appears to be Let the Good Times Roll… in the city manager’s office, at least.

Cavazos’ raise pushes his salary to an astounding $315,000 a year. That’s not counting his $7,200 car allowance, his $4,000 “longevity” bonus and another $8,580 in deferred compensation as a result of his raise, bringing his total deferred pay to $34,650 a year.

His raise and the resulting boost in deferred pay alone is nearly twice the median household income ($43,960) of a Phoenix family, which is something to think about next time you’re paying for groceries.

It should provide a cushy boost to his pension, as well – catapulting him ever closer Frank Fairbanksland. (Fairbanks, as you will recall, is the Phoenix city manager who retired with a pension larger than that of any U.S. president.)

Mayor Greg Stanton defended Cavazos’ pay raise as necessary if the city is to attract and keep top talent. He predicted that many positions throughout the city will be “adjusted accordingly.”

“We are going to make sure we have a competitive workplace in which we are able to attract and recruit great employees,” Stanton told me. “By the way, I come from the ... mindset that that neighborhood services worker who goes out and works day to day out in the neighborhoods with neighborhood groups doing anti graffiti (work) is incredibly important to the future of this city.”

I agree. But Cavazos isn’t that guy.

The fact that the top man gets a raise before pay and benefits are fully restored to that guy – the ones cleaning up graffiti and picking up the garbage and answering 911 calls – is a slap in the face.

Stanton says he expects pay raises for the rest to happen soon -- “assuming the economy keeps heading in the right direction, hopefully we don’t go over the fiscal cliff, this economy keeps improving and the city budget situation keeps improving, in the very near future.”

The near future, as opposed to on Nov. 16, when the Council voted Cavazo his bonanza. The vote was 8-1, with only Councilman Jim Waring objecting. Even Sal DiCiccio, who for years has railed against city spendthrifts, chugged the Kool-aid.

DiCiccio told me Cavazos has pushed needed reforms this year, cutting $59 million in spending, moving to a more transparent budget process and ensuring that there would be no sewer/water rate increase for the first time in two decades.

Cavazos, he said, will be given several goals for the coming year, including more streamlining, a shift toward performance pay for employees and new strategies to encourage job growth. The specifics have yet to be worked out but DiCiccio said he’d like to see Cavazos find another $100 million in efficiencies.

“If we get these three measures in place that change the scope of government then that is an entire reform agenda that most people would dream of,” he said. “Is $78,000 worth getting these significant measures in place?”

That’s a good question. Here’s a better one.

Was it necessary to pay Cavazos another $86,580 (plus the resulting pension increase) in order to get him to do his job?

Potheads rejoice! A Superior Court judge today said that Arizona is good to go with the state’s medical marijuana program.

The fact that marijuana is is illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act shouldn’t deter granny from smoking a joint to relieve the glaucoma, the judge ruled. You know, states rights and all that.

The first two dispensaries plan to open this month, giving “medical-marijuana patients” a place to legally obtain the pot.

Medical marijuana eked its way into Arizona in 2010, as voters were sold on the law as a way to ease granny’s glaucoma or a loved one’s battle with cancer.

Nearly 34,000 Arizonans now hold cards giving them permission to smoke pot, according to the state Department of Health Services.

Of them: a whopping 3.76 percent smoke dope to ease the symptoms of cancer and 1.53 percent have glaucoma.

Nearly 73 percent of "patients" are men, which seems curious when you consider that women report more intense pain in virtually every category of disease, according to the Standford University School of Medicine study. Then again, maybe it's not so curious when you consider that men are twice as likely as women to smoke weed, according to the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

And the people most likely to seek relief from their pain? Yep, 18 to 30 year olds. More than 26 percent of card holders are 18-30 while 13 percent are over 60.

That's because “medical” marijuana is a joke. The idea of pot smokes as "patients" and pot growers as "caregivers" is a joke.

Let's just be honest about it and legalize marijuana. Then we ought to tax the heck of it, as we do with cigarettes.

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